Honestly, as a faithful Catholic who has seen AmChurch run my Faith into the ground, I can tell you that much of the time I am frustrated and angry at the refusal of the Papacy to apply discipline that could (would?) put us back on the path to ecclesiastical sanity.
IMO, the Papal hesitancy in applying discipline has not yielded a lot of positive results.
If I were Pope, I'd publicly state, "Y'all have until Good Friday to get right with the Lord and the Church. That goes for anyone who goes to the illicit Masses of the SSPX to those who go to Neocatechumenal Liturgues and anyone else who opposes me. If y'all aren't in union with me, if you do not obey legitimate and Divinely Ordained authority, y'all can go to hell. Capiche? Y'all got to Good Friday. Period. Come the Monday after Easter, Y'all are excomunicated. That's it. We Popes haven't been doing our jobs. We have been too lenient. Good Friday, that ends. Good Friday is the day we bury leniency and tolerance. This Easter, the Church will rise purified and on fire. Y'all either with me or against me. Choose life or death."
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Well. I can't say I disagree. :)
It does seem to me that Pope Benedict XVI is moving in that direction, however.
Pope John Paul II, with the able assistance of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger and B. (?) Cardinal Gantin did the honors on SSPX in 1988 in Ecclesia Dei. They are already declared excommunicated schismatics, despite their defense that: "OOOOOHHH, don't you see? It was an emergency! If old Marcel had not spit in the face of John Paul II by defying his direct orders and consecrating the Econe 4, we SSPXers would not have gotten our way. I mean, we had no choice! The pope was openly disobeying Marcel. What else could we do???"
Can we create a Catholic Hierarchical Action Committee to which Catholics can contribute toward the end of electing bornaCatholic at the next conclave??? I like bornacatholic's style in that last paragraph particularly. It has a real papal ring to it. Even if bornacatholic is a married layman (bac is a man, yes???), we can figure out a rationale for the next conclave to get around that rule.
Visualize: "We announce to you a great joy! We have a pope! B. A. Catholic who has chosen to be known as Pope Torquemada in honor of the first saint to be summarily canonized after the new Holy Father's election. The Holy Father wants you to know that all curial resignations have been accepted, that the laity will take charge of some of the critical offices. New congregations are to be created. Ninenot will head the Congregation for Membership in the Faith, no one to be listed without proof adequate to Ninenot of orthodox Catholic commitment, knowledge and zeal. The Holy Office is to be renamed the Congregation for Sacred Discipline and will be chaired by Black Elk. Executions in the traditional fashion (prolonged form after appropriate forms of inquiry and preliminary discipline shall commence on the first Friday after this announcement and trials will be held thereafter beginning in six months. Transcripts of the testimony of the deceased miscreants will be edited and admitted at trial only as ordered by the Holy Father. The Congregation for Disciplinary Engineering and Neat New Toys will be headed by Arrogant Bustard. An appropriate program of Gregorian Chant shall be provided by Desdemona who will chair the new Congregation for Sacred Music. Upon her approval of specific music, the use of such music by individual members of the Faithful shall be protected activity and, in the absence of satire or disrespect by the performer, shall exempt the performer from rack, rope, stake and probably even pit and pendulum." Watch this space for further announcements!
Not me. Pope Benedict said our Church would be much smaller in the future. Time for him to start swinging the scythe and start lopping off the heads of all of these schismatic heretics.Two things. First, there is a vast difference between expecting a smaller Church and hoping for a smaller Church. Your verbiage makes me think you lean farther to the latter than I would be comfortable with.
Second, they are clearly not schismatic. The Pope's statements, if nothing else, cannot help but make that clear, and you have no business contending you can override his statements about them. He determines who is schismatic or not, and where he has ruled you cannot contradict, or you are guilty of the same thing you wish to accuse them of.
So long as the Holy Father continues to work with them and recognize them, they are not schismatic.
As to heresy, I'll look forward to your proof for that statement. Please prove the order is heretical.
Honestly, as a faithful Catholic who has seen AmChurch run my Faith into the ground, I can tell you that much of the time I am frustrated and angry at the refusal of the Papacy to apply discipline that could (would?) put us back on the path to ecclesiastical sanity.Me too.
patent
you wrote: If I were Pope, I'd publicly state, "Y'all have until Good Friday to get right with the Lord and the Church. That goes for anyone who goes to the illicit Masses of the SSPX to those who go to Neocatechumenal Liturgues and anyone else who opposes me. If y'all aren't in union with me, if you do not obey legitimate and Divinely Ordained authority, y'all can go to hell. Capiche? Y'all got to Good Friday. Period. Come the Monday after Easter, Y'all are excomunicated. That's it. We Popes haven't been doing our jobs. We have been too lenient. Good Friday, that ends. Good Friday is the day we bury leniency and tolerance. This Easter, the Church will rise purified and on fire. Y'all either with me or against me. Choose life or death."
Maybe the above is partly an attempt at humor but in case it's not it doesn't sound like the voice of the our Holy Father. This sounds like the sort of triumphalism that Vatican II was supposed to do away with in its attempt to bring the Gospel to the modern world. I do much prefer Pope Benedict's approach to that stated above. Are the Orthodox also just a bunch of hell-bound schizzies? What about the Chinese Patriotic catholics? What does the above say to Protestants if Catholics decide to pronounce anathemas on Christian groups who already agree with 98-99.5 of Church teaching? All Christian groups owe their existence to the Catholic Church, it's a historical fact, and all have elements of the truth in them, some a whole lot more than others. Launching emotional verbal tirades (as if such will truly convert people)shows about much charity as such useless utterances as "the NO is evil"
promote the truth. Faith, hope and charity and the greatest of these is